


Something to Fight

by nerdsherpa



Series: A Hole in the Roof: Haleth Lavellan/Commander Cullen [5]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Cullen Smut, Cullenlingus, Depression, F/M, Light Dom/sub, Post-Trespasser
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-11 06:32:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5617009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdsherpa/pseuds/nerdsherpa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen and Lavellan wrestle with the depression she's fallen into after having her arm amputated by the ancient magic of a former friend who turned out to be a trickster god bent on destroying the world… sort of.</p><p>Amazing sex isn't an instant cure, but it can provide perspective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something to Fight

> _Mia,_
> 
> _We're going to have to postpone our visit another month. Truly, there's nothing I'd like to do more than bring Haleth on a trip to Honnleath, but_ ~~_she's been_ _her duties as Inquisitor have_ _she just needs_~~
> 
> _She's not well, Mia, and I don't know what to do. When the anchor began to trouble her, she would wake shaking, not from the pain but from nightmares where she'd lost her arm. For a time I thought she'd left that fear in the Crossroads, but I think that perhaps Josephine and Vivienne taught her too well to put on a brave face when it is demanded. Even the thought of traveling doesn't entice her. I know that drawing a bow defined her role in her clan, I know she's afraid she'll never do it again, but she's barely even tried Dagna and Ranier's prosthesis._
> 
> _She's afraid it won't work. Or that she won't work._
> 
> _She was willing to fight all of Thedas to keep the Inquisition together. Why isn't she fighting this?_
> 
> _What if she never does?_
> 
> _She works. She eats. She collapses on our bed. We barely touch, and when we do_

And that was probably quite enough of that part of the story, Cullen thought — as he balled the parchment tightly and dropped it into the basket next to Haleth's desk — even for what had become a List of Things He Could Never Say in a Letter to His Sister. He'd have to take another stab at it later.

He looked up at his wife, on her side in their bed where she'd collapsed, as he'd written, after completing her duties for the morning and confessing to him that she simply didn't think she'd feel capable of meeting his family this month. It had become a familiar sight. In fact, the only thing missing was a sad and watchful mabari hound, resting his head obediently on the counterpane he was not allowed upon. The dog was undoubtedly off getting into one sort of trouble or another, and Cullen wondered — as he often did — whether naming the animal "Hawke" had been such a joke after all.

Sighing, he joined his wife, pulling her back flush with his stomach, resting his chin on the top of her head. After a silent prayer to the Maker and Holy Andraste that this time he'd find the right words to escape the tight loop of conversation she'd been stuck in for weeks, he spoke. "Tell me, love."

"I know I shouldn't feel this way," she said.

"You discovered earth-shattering things about the history of your people and all of Thedas, entirely altered your role as the Inquisitor and are adjusting to a massive change in your body. It's all right to take time for that."

"Not this much time. And I've done all those things before."

"And you struggled with them then," he answered calmly, "remember?"

"Not like this," she answered, emotionless, tired.

He held his tongue, frustration mixed with shame for being frustrated in the first place.

"It seems like if I don't have something to fight, I can't bring myself to do _anything_."

He didn't have a response for that either.

"Gods, what does that say about me?"

Hearing tears in her voice, he attempted a gentle subject change. "My afternoon is empty. Why don't we try out Dagna's hand?"

"It won't work."

"You don't _know_ that, Haleth," he said, and immediately regretted it. What had sounded supportive in his head had left his mouth with an undertone of exasperation. 

Silence stretched between them.

"You don't have to stay with me," she said, softly. "I'm sure you have better things you could be doing."

Afterward, Cullen had wondered about the mix of frustration, shame and fear that had guided his next actions, but he'd always been grateful for the ultimate results.

"No," he said, sitting up, swinging her legs off the bed with his own and then gripping her arm, the left one, the anchor one, and hauling her upright. "No. You want something to fight? Fight _me_."

She stared at him, all sad confusion. But as he watched, her eyes narrowed the smallest amount, her brows knit just slightly. "What?" she said slowly, and to his undying relief he could hear just the hint of a familiar tone, one he'd heard quite often in this very room. He was not about to let it fade away.

"Get up," he growled in his best Templar voice as he pulled her to her feet, gripped the shoulders of her jacket in both hands, and roughly pulled it off, throwing it on the bed. Next, he dragged her across the room, tugged the wide neck of her shirt down over her shoulders and what remained of her left arm, flipped open the polished wooden box on her desk, and began strapping on the prototype gripping device that Dagna and Tom had presented her with three weeks previously.

"Ouch! You're doing it wrong!"

"Then _you_ do it," he snapped back, and let go of the chest strap. He watched her until she did, and then helped her rearrange her shirt around the "bones" and "tendons" of the prosthetic. When he was satisfied, he took her wrist in his hand and pulled her, fast enough to make her skip but not stumble, down to the main hall.

"Private," he accosted the first soldier he came across, "tell Arcanist Dagna I need her by the training dummies, ready to take notes." The woman took in the thundercloud look on both their faces, stammered a response and fled towards the Undercroft. He kept pulling Haleth along.

"I can walk," she protested, and _ah_ , she was using the Inquisitor voice now, "I lost an arm, not a _leg_."

He turned around so quickly that she bumped into him, albeit gently. He released her wrist. "Then _show_ me."

Her lip curled, but she said nothing as she stepped around him and stalked out of the hall.

He allowed himself a moment to let his shoulders sag, to take several deep breaths, to push his hair back... and set his face again. Then he followed her.

* * *

 "It's going to be different. You won't need to tense half the muscles in your bow arm anymore, but since you haven't done this since the Council, you'll be weak. You'll need time to build up the strength you used to have."

The gripper on the prosthesis, in conjunction with some modifications made to the grip of her bow, worked a treat as far as holding went. He guided her body the same way he would any new recruit. Well, actually, he was quite a bit more familiar than he would be with a recruit, but he was, after all, her husband. "Today, we're just going to focus on hitting a stationary target from a stationary point. Dagna's here to take notes on your form—"

"—and any discomfort you may notice with the hand! The whole thing's adjustable and moddable! Cup size and padding, shoulder plate, grip strength, strap size, position, tightness, color—"

"Dagna," he cautioned.

Haleth was flushed and trembling slightly, so he continued, deliberately slowly. "Now, watch your elbow position. Inhale, hold to aim, and exh—"

"I know how to fire a bow!" she snarled.

He took a controlled step back. "On my mark." She adjusted her stance slightly from where he'd positioned her, silently daring him to object. "Inhale and aim." She made a small noise of effort as the arrow drew back. "Fire."

She overshot. But he'd been expecting this. "Again, Inquisitor!" he called out. Grim-faced, she took a slow breath through her nose and knocked another shaft. "Aim. Fire."

The arrow arced gracefully and gently to root itself upright in a hummock of grass at the base of the target. "Again! Aim." She whimpered as she pulled back, so softly that he was sure he was the only one to hear it. "Fire." She let out a short cry as she released her hand and this time struck true: Piercing the arm of the dummy.

"The cup needs more padding," she panted, as Dagna scribbled and then bustled forward to make in-the-moment adjustments.

"Again," he repeated when the dwarf was done, noticing that a small group of scouts and soldiers was gathering, and prayed they'd stay out of her line of sight.

And so it went. Haleth's aim improved with each adjustment Dagna made, to straps and buckles and metal latchwork, skimming the sides of the dummy's torso but slamming true more often than not. Still, after a quarter of an hour, the exertion of drawing the bow after months of inaction had her shirt drenched in sweat and her breath coming ragged.

But when he'd called "That's enough," and Dagna had agreed that she had excellent data with which to produce an improved version, Haleth had rolled her shoulders and then knocked another arrow.

He watched her chest expand, her arm draw back and tremble... and then she released the shaft with an explosive exhale. It buried itself without ceremony in the upper right side of the dummy's head, exactly where most people kept their left eye.

He had only a second to drink in the look of profound relief on his wife's face before a triumphant whoop, which he recognized instantly as coming from the mouth of Scout Harding, sounded behind them.

They turned to the applause of a dozen Inquisition soldiers, scouts and agents. "Go, Inquisitor!" someone shouted, to a chorus of slightly embarrassed laughter. Haleth staggered and he caught her good elbow to steady her. She was even more flushed, but smiling slightly.

"Thank you, Dagna," with her right hand she unhooked her bow from the prosthetic's grip and handed it to the dwarf, "and please thank Tom for me as well, when you write him. I look forward to working with you on the next model."

"Any time, Inquisitor!"

And he was just beginning to feel some of the tightness in his chest unravel when Haleth turned to him and said, in a voice that had icicles like greatswords, "Commander Cullen."

He bowed his head. "M-my lady."

* * *

"Haleth, I'm so sorry," he stammered in the privacy of her room, when her hand snaked out, grabbed his collar, and pulled his face down to a blistering kiss. Her prosthetic landed hard and angular on the back of his neck when she wrapped her other arm around it. As a parting gift, she raked her teeth across his lip, and he gasped entirely involuntarily.

Knees turning to water, he recognized what was going on. He would never forget the way Haleth had calmly shrugged and said "Sometimes you want to be the hunter. Sometimes you want to be the hunted," when he'd nervously asked if she found certain of his reactions to their lovemaking strange. The phrase, a (rather vulgar, she admitted) Dalish one, had become something of a byword for them since. Cullen liked to be the hunted, and he loved nothing more than when Haleth was in the mood to be the hunter. Unless, perhaps, it was those rare occasions where he felt inspired to take the role himself, the last of which had been when he'd found an unoccupied storage room in the Winter Palace roughly half an hour after they'd gotten married.

Which, he realized, was also the last time they'd played any such games. He'd been aware that it had been a while, but… He started thinking about how her damp shirt had looked, clinging to her chest and shoulders as she fired, but that train of thought was cut short when she sank her fingers into the hair at the back of his head and pulled until he was staring at the ceiling, moaning.

"You're going to take your clothes off, Commander," she growled, "And I'm going to watch. Is that _alright_ with you?"

" _Yes_ ," he panted.

"Good." She let go of his hair, eliciting another gasp from him. "You have your orders."

He had already taken off most of his armor before sitting down to write the letter, so this assignment was simpler than usual. First, his coat, hung carefully on the back of the chair. Then his shirt, after turning to face her so that she wouldn't miss the planes of his stomach, or the growing bulge in his breeches. The shirt was spread on the seat of the chair, in case she wanted either of them to sit in it later. For now, he sat to remove his boots, and then rose, turning away from her to slowly pull his breeches and linens down. He'd known her eyes were on his every action, but, as he straightened to step out of his clothes, the unmistakable brush of her fingers over the curve of his ass was the first sign that she'd crossed the room.

She let her fingertips trail around his hip as he turned, but not so far as to touch the taut skin of his erection, for which she spared a momentary, heavy-lidded glance before angling her face towards his and parting her lips. He took the invitation and kissed her eagerly, swiping her tongue with his own.

"Good soldier," she said, just a bit breathless, "you get to undress me."

Now there, there was a good sign. From the moment she'd realized she needed him to button her formal uniform, to this very morning when he'd bound her breasts with quickly earned expertise, she'd rankled at her new inability to perform such basic tasks for herself. But if she was making it part of this… perhaps he had gotten through to her even more than was already evident.

He unknotted her kerchief and pressed his lips to her neck as he rucked up her shirt, the better to guide it over her head and gently around the prototype hand. Unbuckling the straps of the hand gave him ample opportunity to lick and kiss the spots on her ribcage and collarbone where they had already rubbed her skin pink. Maker willing, soon they would be callouses he'd know as well as every other perfect imperfection on her body. He sucked gently at the one on the crown of her shoulder and she gasped.

"Too much?"

"No."

He continued. Carefully, he took the prosthesis from her, laid it inside its box, and returned to the chair, a better angle from which to unwind the stretchy, loose-woven linen she used to secure her breasts. A few passes and he was able to run his fingers teasingly over the revealed edge of one brown areola, with a sigh as his reward. Another few and her chest, which he still found as sublimely engrossing as the day he'd first seen her, was naked before him. She made a mewling sound as he nuzzled one of her breasts, swiping his lips across its hard point, and a moan as he seized her nipple in his teeth and flicked his tongue over it.

Generously, he thought, she allowed him to play with his mouth on one breast and his hand on the other for several long moments, the muscles of her stomach twitching and her breath coming in unsteady gasps… until she gripped the back of his hair again and breathed "Focus, Commander. You have orders."

"Yes, lady," he nodded, relishing the extra pull the movement exerted on his scalp. He rose and moved behind her, undoing her belt and sliding her slacks and linens off together, unable to resist nipping playfully at her ass as he sat on his heels to guide them off her feet. One of the conveniences of having a lover who almost never wore shoes.

Once freed, she seated herself on the chair, and he swallowed hard at the breathtaking view of her naked form looming over him, left knee cocked over the chair arm, right hand laid lightly over the inside of her thigh. He was struck with a sudden realization of where he'd seen a similar pose before, and kissed her knee before pressing his face to it. "What is your judgement, Inquisitor?" he asked, unable to keep from smirking.

She laughed, soft and low, trailing her fingers over his face to the scar on his lip, a habitual resting place. "You're going to make me come. And then, if you're very good, you're going to make yourself come." She gripped his chin, dragging his ass off his heels until he stood on his knees, and kissed him. "Is that understood?"

He shivered, wonderfully. "Yes, my lady Inquisitor." Leaning into her spread legs, he kissed and lapped his way down the hollow of her throat, her collarbone, her breasts, all the while kneading his thumbs slowly up the inside of her thighs. She put her head back, panting, as he traded his mouth on her nipple for tugging fingers, the better to watch what he did next.

He glided his thumb lightly over her clitoris. Her hiss turned into a moan when he did it again, her grip tight on the arm of the chair as he slowly stroked the wetness of her (of which there was plenty) up the folds of her sex. By the time he was rubbing small, firm circles into her flesh, she was trembling with the effort of breathing deep and even.

Her hand met the back of his head as she locked heavy-lidded eyes with him and moaned his name. Not an order _or_ a plea, but it made his prick twitch with a strength he hadn't previously been aware it was capable of. He didn't need her hand to guide him down until he could press his lips and tongue to her.

He began with long, slow strokes up the length of her as he arranged her thighs over his shoulders and pulled her towards the edge of the chair. When she was spread enough he sucked gently at the most sensitive part of her, just to enjoy the bucking of her hips, before he settled into a steady, urgent rhythm.

The hand on the back of his head fell away and she began to whimper in elvhen. Cullen lost himself in the feel and the taste of her; his beautiful, heroic wife coming alive at his touch like she hadn't in months, muttering, gasping and quivering as he locked his arms around her thighs and did not stop.

"Stop!" she gasped — minutes or years later, he wasn't sure — and he obeyed instantly. Loose-jawed and with his cheek pressed against her stomach, he recognized that there was an urgency to this command where there hadn't been before, and thrilled to it. Her fingers laced back into his hair as she caught her breath. "I want to sit on your face when I come."

"Oh, _Maker_ , yes," he moaned, the words slipping out unbidden as he lifted her out of the chair and stumbled them to the bed. They landed with her straddling his chest, and as she steadied herself on the headboard, he guided her legs until the warmth of her hung tantalizingly over his face.

She paused, then, breathing even, hand and forehead pressed against the wall, eyes closed. "Please," he whispered hoarsely, turning his face to lip hungrily at the inside of her thigh, surprising himself with the naked desire in his voice. "My lady, please."

She exhaled, somewhere between a sigh and a low laugh, and lowered her hips.

When he took her in his mouth again, they both moaned. As Cullen had once explained to her, and her alone, he generally agreed that the release of arousal was the peak of the sexual act, but there were times — times with his face buried in the shadow of her thighs, with the weight of her pressing him into the bed — that he wondered. Andraste preserve him, to be so overborne, and yet so capable of undoing her in return… there was no other experience he thought worth the comparison. Even now, as she hissed through her teeth in elvhen above him, his stomach was growing wet where it was touched by the tip of his prick.

She stopped speaking in words entirely as he slicked two of his fingers and pressed them slowly inside her. Surrounded by the shivering skin of her thighs, taut against his face, the sound of her panting, shallow and quick, and the warm, wet geography of her sex around his fingers, he hung on to the rhythm of his tongue to keep from being overwhelmed.

Her muscles began to tighten around his fingers in their own slow, strong counterpoint, and she fell to a near silence that he recognized with a glow of triumph. He pressed his free hand to the small of her back and started thrusting the other upwards, matching her pace.

She made a small, high sound in her throat and then a titanic gasp of air that became a cry, a curse, his name, the elvhen endearment " _ma'vhenan_ ," all in turn. She moaned her release and he held her steady as her sex squeezed tight around his fingers, the muscles of her legs and stomach quivering. Still, he didn't stop his tongue until she lifted herself away from him to roll bonelessly aside. Then, he wiped his mouth down one forearm and pulled her close, nuzzling into her side as her heaving chest grew stiller.

He let her lie quiet and sated ...until he could stand the wait no longer.

"My lady," he breathed into the skin of her back, "Have I been very good?"

"Are you worried that I'd forgotten?" she chuckled darkly as she rolled over, but then paused, taking in the sight of him stretched naked on their bed, anointed their sweat and arousal. He'd spread the fingertips of one hand over the crest of his hip, achingly close to his erection but not touching it — waiting for her order.

"Yes," she said slowly, "you have been very good." A few moments of shifting pillows and gentle pulling and she arranged them so she sat mostly upright and he reclined against her, his head resting on her chest. It was a view he knew she liked. Drawing her fingertips hard across his scalp until he shivered, she pressed her lips to his ear. "Come for me, Cullen."

He required no further urging to take himself in hand, but did so gently. After standing so long without any attention paid to it, his prick was so sensitive he might as well have been a farm boy fumbling in a hayloft. Circling his shaft lightly with his fingers, he brushed his thumb over its tip, spreading the moisture there over his prickhead. Only then did he grip himself for a few idle, soft strokes.

Self-control kept him from speeding immediately to the sort of rhythm that he considered best deserved the description of "abusing yourself." He wanted to relish this, to relish Haleth's eyes upon him and her breath on his ear, and so he started up an insistent but slow pace with his hand.

With the rush of sensation came other, less controllable things: a slow breath sighed from his lips. His eyes fluttered shut. His groin and belly grew taut. Haleth stroked her fingers across his scalp and danced her lips and tongue over his neck and shoulder until his head swam. He thought of her, tight around him, straddling his hips and moving to whatever rhythm most pleased her. He thought about when he'd pulled her dress down and buried his face in her breasts on their wedding day, and how, on his order, she'd undone his uniform (making sure it would still be wearable in public when they were done), kneeled, and taken him into her mouth.

He realized that in the here and now, he'd drawn his heels up, the better to buck his hips into his hand, and was grunting softly with every thrust. Behind him, he could feel her breath quickening on his neck as well.

"Are you going to come for me?" her voice was breathy, hungry. She ran her fingernails lightly down his chest to one of his nipples, grasped it, and pinched.

He made a mewling sound. " _Maker_ , _I want to_." She kissed his temple as he pressed his head back into her chest, panting in short gasps. He abandoned long strokes entirely for rubbing the tight ring of his fingers up and down the head of his prick, the inside of his thighs pulling tight until they shook.

"H… Haleth..."

" _Please_. Come for me?"

He came with a wordless shout, his release landing warm and wet across his chest and even licking up to his neck. She held his head to her as he convulsed and thrust senselessly, riding the crest of his orgasm until his prick became too sensitive to stroke and even then, unable to stop himself, pushing just a little further.

As he caught his breath he vaguely recognized that she'd left him lying on the bed alone, but she returned soon after with a cloth that she used to clean herself and then him. The cloth was his shirt, he realized, as she tossed it over the side of the bed and slid down the sheets to lie beside him. He pulled her close and kissed her, and she kissed him back.

"Cullen, that was... good."

"It was _much_ better than good."

"Yes," she laughed softly, agreeing. "It was..." she trailed off. " _G_ _ood_."

As usual for a post-coital state, he found himself unable to take his hands off her, wanting to press as much of his skin against hers as possible. He thought about how this had been a day for pushing her boundaries, and as he absently stroked her curves he carefully ran his hand down her left arm, until the smooth dome of scar tissue where her elbow had been lay cool in his palm.

Her face twisted, but still, for once, she allowed him a few moments of gentle exploration before she twitched out of his grasp. "Don't— don't."

" _Ma emma lath_ , Haleth." _You are my love_. "And this is a part of you. I want to know it as well as every other."

She didn't respond, except to turn her head to press the side of her face into the sheet. He let his hand fall around her waist.

"I'm sorry I couldn't come back to you whole," she said, when fighting back the quiet tears became impossible.

"You came back," he wiped her cheek. "You know that's all I care about."

She nodded, blinking rapidly and looking even more hopeless.

He sighed, closing his eyes and pressing his forehead gently to hers. "You are the bravest, cleverest, most selfless and noble person I have ever known. It infuriates me when other people can't see that. And when _you_ can't see that… it..."

He trailed off. Tightening his arms, he clutched her close, and she pressed her face into his skin.

"Your fury," she said, after a long silence, "helped me feel like myself today. For a little while. I'm not sure what that means."

"I think it means that a part of you is very angry."

"So I take it out on _you_?"

"I _did_ give you permission to fight me," he answered, unable to keep the smirk from his face.

"I don't _want_ to fight you! _Ma emma vhenan_!" _You are my heart!_

"There are far less healthy ways to channel anger, love. I've seen some of them." He stroked her cheek with his thumb. "I can take it. I'm a warrior."

"My warrior," she leaned into his hand.

"Your commander."

She grabbed his wrist, so that she could turn her face to kiss his palm, before rolling onto her back to stare at the ceiling. "What you did today, to get me to the target range. Will you do it again, when I most need it?"

"As surely as a mabari knows its master," he answered, lacing his fingers with hers. "Do you think it'll always end in... games?"

She blew out a breath. "I think you might have to restrain me for it to ever be otherwise."

"Well, I'd have to ask Bull some questions first."

The peal of bright laughter that poured out of her, after a moment of confused silence, felt almost as good as the sex.


End file.
